Gatton Park
Photo: Marathon / CC BY-SA 2.0, modified.
Overview
The Japanese Garden in Gatton Park is an Edwardian Japanese-style garden created in 1909 for Sir Jeremiah Colman. It was designed by Edward White and laid out in a damp wooded corner of the Gatton estate, reflecting the early twentieth-century British fashion for Japanese arts and garden design. Gatton Park’s own history states that Colman commissioned Edward White to create the garden, and the Japanese Garden Society gives the same designer and patron relationship.
History
Gatton Park has an older eighteenth-century landscape layer associated with Lancelot “Capability” Brown, but the Japanese Garden belongs to the later Edwardian phase under Sir Jeremiah Colman. The garden was constructed in 1909 and later fell into neglect after changes to the estate. It was effectively lost for around half a century, then rediscovered and restored from 1999; Gatton Park marked 25 years since the restoration in 2024.
Design features
The garden includes a Minka-style tea house, granite lanterns, an oriental bridge, cascades, water features and a wooded setting. The Japanese Garden Society describes it as an Edwardian conception of a Japanese garden, with an ornate bridge, stone lanterns reflected in water, cascades and a thatched Minka-style house used for afternoon tea.
Garden elements
Bridges
Buildings
Waters and islands
Stones
Other elements
Current status
Extant and restored Edwardian Japanese-style garden within the wider Gatton Park estate. The garden was constructed in 1909 in a damp wooded corner of the estate and was later lost or buried for several decades before being rediscovered and restored from 1999 onward. It is now maintained by the Gatton Trust as one of the key restored features of Gatton Park. The wider park is not open daily; public access is mainly through monthly open days, special events, school-related access and organised activities.